(This article first appeared in the SF Weekly)
Last week technology reporter Farhad Manjoo wrote an impassioned defense of the city’s tech sector for SF Magazine. By chance our own tech-savvy correspondent, SF Techie, had written a very similar article, often using the very same words. We’re proud to present it now, in support of his well thought out case.
By SF Techie
I recently met a 23 year-old who’s launching a startup while living out of his car. As a young tech entrepreneur, on or off his meds, he represents San Francisco’s future, and he’s not alone. Hundreds of thousands of equally qualified people are all moving to the Bay Area.
They’re coming here to innovate. And is there anything more innovative, in this day and age, than being a twenty-something with an idea for a startup?
They have to come here. One of the great promises of the Internet, after all, is liberation from the petty constraints of geography. But in practice, that’s absurd — if you want to be anyone in tech, you have to be in the Bay Area. Which means that, this one time, the Internet didn’t actually live up to its promise to change something. But that’s the only time that happened, or ever will happen. That and ending racism. And raising the living standard of the middle class. It turns out the internet has failed to do any of that.
But that’s it. We should be confident that every other promise made about the Internet by tech-funded economists, tech-funded journalists, and tech-entrepreneurs, will come true. Why? Because: Technology. Disruption. New Economy. 2.0.
You can’t argue with that.
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